No time, she decided as she took from her pack a copy of the spellbook her father had given her. Any spell in that book could take most of the night to learn and cast.
Liriel paged to a particularly difficult spell—the one that had first introduced her to the priestesses of Eilistraee. The first time she had ventured to the surface, the wizard who served as her tutor had insisted that she seek out a company of dark elves. The spell had been attuned to search for such beings and to carry her to an open place a safe distance away. It was an unusual spell, every bit as difficult as she remembered. This time she did not have the assistance of her powerful drow mentor. It was nearly dawn when Liriel at last was ready to try.
The drow began to chant softly, swaying as she did, her hands weaving in a seemingly random, seeking pattern. She felt a sudden chill, the sharp tang of a cold northern wind, and knew the casting had worked. Exactly where the spell had taken her, she could not know.
All around her was the sound of the sea. She opened her eyes and scanned the shore. Here it was rocky and wild, with no natural harbor. Above her was a sharp cliff; beyond that wisps of smoke drifted lazily into the sky. Liriel wrapped herself in her piwafwi and floated up to the top of the bluff so that she might investigate the settlement beyond.
A glance told her she was still somewhere in Ruathym. The cluster of cottages were built of wood and decorated with intricate, interlocking arches and high-peaked roofs, a style identical to the buildings of a Ruathym village.
In the village, all seemed well. The cottages were silent; hounds slept undisturbed in the courtyards. Yet Liriel trusted in the spell that had brought her to this place, and she swept a seeking gaze over the village and the shore beyond.
Her keen eyes caught the shimmering ripple as something broke the surface of the sea. A hideous, fishlike head with huge round eyes and ears like small black fins emerged from the water. With quick, furtive movements the creature pulled itself out onto the rocks and scanned the bluff above. Roughly man-shaped, it was covered with dark green scales. Fanged jaws, like those of the deadly pyrimo fish found in Underdark waters, opened and closed as the creatures spoke sounds Liriel could not hear. It was a signal, apparently, for at least a score of other creatures crept from the waves and began to scale the cliff that separated the sea from the village.
“Sahuagin,” Liriel whispered excitedly. There could be no doubt. These were the creatures described in the lore books, identical to the thing she had seen when she’d looked into Sittl. The long-haired sea ranger was almost certainly a malenti—a mutated sahuagin passing as a sea elf—and Xzorsh’s life might well depend on her ability to convince him of this.
The drow’s first impulse was to reverse the spell that had brought her here so she might warn the sea ranger at once. But as she watched the creatures scale the cliff, her resolution wavered. One of them, smaller and slower than the others, failed to find a secure hold for its webbed foot. It slid painfully down the rocky incline, and the claws on its feet grazed one of its elders as it went. The larger sahuagin lunged like a striking snake, jaws snapping viciously at the offending creature and sinking deep into the soft tissue beneath its rib cage. After tearing off a large chunk of flesh, the big sahuagin calmly chewed and swallowed. Its now-dead comrade continued the slide, falling unnoticed to the rocks below.
Liriel swallowed hard. She had little love for the patronizing, stubborn humans of Ruathym, but neither did she like the idea of abandoning them to the murderous sahuagin. Yet she could not warn the villagers; they would likely fear her as much as they did the fish-men. No, she’d have to handle this one on her own.
The drow reviewed what she had learned of the creatures. They hated light—they were as pained by it as any Underdark drow—and they feared spellcasters. That would do for a start.
Liriel readied the spells she needed and waited until all the creatures had scaled the bluff. In precise and orderly formation, they crept past the invisible drow toward the sleeping village, their bulbous black eyes bright with fierce anticipation.
At Liriel’s command, a curtain of yellow faerie fire blazed up along the edge of the bluff, cutting the sahuagin off from the sea and casting their long, hideous shadows into the village beyond. Instantly the sahuagin stopped their advance, casting frantically about for some means of escape. But there was none. The sudden bright light roused some of the villagers, and cries of alarm began to spread. In moments the warrior-bred Ruathen poured from their cottages, fully armed and ready to do battle.
One of the sahuagin, the large and casual cannibal, whistled out some sort of command. The others fell into a wedge-shaped formation, their weapons—a motley and no doubt stolen collection of spears, tridents, and hauberks—snapped up before them. Liriel noted that the big sahuagin took up a position at the very rear, and that the creatures got progressively smaller as they neared the forward point. This did not surprise her—drow did not expend their leaders in battle, either. The sahuagin were apparently ranked according to size and strength, with those of lesser rank taking the greatest risks.
Liriel once again called upon drow magic and limned the sahuagin chieftain with faerie fire, so that it blazed like a green torch. The creature clacked and whistled frantically as it pawed at itself with its clawed hands, as if trying to extinguish the flames. The others, momentarily deprived of command, faltered, and the strict formation fell apart. But then the Ruathen were upon them, and the sahuagin knew what to do. They fell into battle with vicious delight, attacking the humans with their slashing talons, rending jaws, and stolen weapons.
The drow tossed back her cloak and advanced on the leader. She dropped the faerie fire that surrounded the large sahuagin and pulled her long dagger in preparation for its attack. But the creature merely stared at her, its fishlike eyes intelligent beyond her expectations, and filled with rapt awe. To Liriel’s astonishment and chagrin, the sahuagin fell to its knees and briefly touched its scaly head to the ground in an unmistakable gesture of adulation.
Liriel did not even want to think about the implications of this. She kicked out hard, catching the sahuagin under its scant chin and sending it sprawling backward. Instinctively the creature drew a knife and parried her first lunge. Leaping nimbly to its feet, the sahuagin faced her down and presented its long knife in a weird parody of a drow challenge. Liriel responded with a feint and a quick, slashing cut. The sahuagin blocked, blocked again, then riposted. Its movements were fast, fluid, and oddly elven. As the battle progressed, Liriel was hard pressed to hold it back, though she was by far the better trained. The unlikely opponents stood toe to toe, exchanging swift and ringing blows. Liriel was relieved that this one, unlike its brethren, did not employ the sahuagin’s darting, deadly bite in battle. She was fully occupied by its swordcraft!
At long last she slipped past the creature’s guard and sank her dagger deep into its gut. She gave the weapon a vicious twist and wrenched it out, then thrust in again. The dying sahuagin’s knife dropped from its nerveless claws, and the creature once again fell to its knees, its eyes bright with adoration and fixed upon Liriel’s dark, elven face. The drow delivered a backhanded slash to the creature’s throat, ending its misery and quenching the incomprehensible, fervid light in its black eyes.
The strange encounter left Liriel feeling shaken and somehow tainted. She shook off the lingering, queasy dread and whirled to address the nearest opponent.
A large sahuagin had managed to toss a weighted net over a red-clad warrior and was poking at the trapped man with a long spear. None of the thrusts hit a vital point; the fish-man was toying with its prey with obvious and sadistic glee.
Without thought, Liriel conjured a small fireball and hauled it back for the throw. Startled by the sudden burst of light, the sahuagin spun to face her. Its viciously grinning jaws fell slack with astonishment as it faced the magic-wielding drow, and terror froze the creature in place. Pitiless, the young wizard hurled her weapon with deadly accuracy. The fireball flew unerringly i
nto the creature’s enormous mouth. The explosion sent a spray of gore and ichor flying, and the headless sahuagin dropped heavily to the ground.
Liriel stepped over the body and crouched beside the wounded man. Her dagger flashed as she quickly cut him free from the entangling net. Although he bled from a dozen shallow wounds, it was apparent that he could yet fight. The drow pressed one of her own knives into his hands. Hauling him to his feet, she gave him a firm shove in the direction of the nearest sahuagin. The man tossed a quick, grateful nod toward the drow and then flung himself into battle, roaring an oath to Tempus as he went.
A brief, faint smile curved Liriel’s lips. The Ruathen were warriors to the core, ready to respect and accept another warrior who had proven worthy—perhaps even one as strange as she. The thought brought her a moment’s warmth, and then it fled as the crush and turmoil of battle closed in about her.
The drow fought alongside the Northmen, using all the battle skills at her command. Her bolos spun around the legs of the fish-men and sent them sprawling; her throwing knives buried themselves in the eyes and throats of the sahuagin; her dagger dripped with greenish ichor. When at last the invaders lay dead, the eyes of all the Northmen settled upon their strange ally.
“You are dock-alfar, yet also a rune-caster,” one of them ventured in an awed tone. “It has been long years since such a rune-casting warrior led this village in battle, but in ages past it was ever so. Most of the people of Ruathym do not much care for magic, but here we remember the ancient ways and honor them. How are you called?”
For some reason Fyodor’s special name for her danced ready on her tongue. “Raven,” she said simply.
This brought approving nods from the warriors. Liriel remembered the tales Fyodor and Olvir told, ancient stories that claimed ravens visited the battlefields to guide the spirits of the slain into the afterlife. Yes, it was a good name for a drow among Northmen.
She let the men lead her into the village, which, it seemed, was only a few hours’ walk north of the village of Ruathym. They promised to show her the way back after the songs were sung to honor the slain. And so she sat in a place of honor beside the village chieftain—the man she’d saved from the sahuagin’s net—listening as the village skald spun out the lineage and deeds of the men who had fallen during the sahuagin attack, and watching as sparks from the funeral pyre leaped high into the clear blue sky.
It was a strange ceremony, yet the drow found it oddly moving. In Menzoberranzan, the dead were usually interred in small, airtight stone crypts dug into the solid rock that lay north of the city cavern. This was a matter of practicality, not respect. The bodies were simply stored there until a need arose for battle fodder or slave labor, at which point a wizard would be called upon to animate the corpses. Only priestesses of Lloth were cremated. Here on Ruathym, this honor was apparently extended to all, even the lowliest thrall.
The day was nearly spent before Liriel saw the high-pitched roofs of Ruathym village. As she walked, one of the skald’s songs echoed in her memory—a newly composed ballad that honored the little warrior known as the Raven.
For the first time, the adrift and restless drow felt a tendril of herself reach out and take root in this strange land. And one more curving line was added to the rune that was slowly taking shape in her mind.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE CAPTAIN’S CONSPIRACY
The Regent of Ascarle bent low over the scrying crystal attuned to her aboleth ally, staring into the smooth surface long after the vision had faded away—along with the creature’s life-force. The illithid was not pleased by the loss of the aboleth, or by the fish-thing’s failure to kill and consume the drow wizard. Vestress wanted the powers wielded by Liriel Baenre, and learning of them secondhand from the aboleth had seemed a reasonable approach to take.
The illithid had witnessed Liriel’s escape from the aboleth’s charm spell, and she was intrigued that a single drow could command so much strength of mind and magic. She was not in error in suspecting that this drow, with her wizardly spells and her Underdark magic, might yet provide the answer to a vexing problem.
For all her power, despite the myriad secret tentacles that probed into the affairs of much of the Northlands, Vestress had lost her ties to her own ancient heritage. She was a rogue illithid, cast off from the city where she’d been spawned, denied the community of collective minds that sustained her kindred. The self-proclaimed Regent of Ascarle was desperate to establish contact with others of her kind. She had tried, many times before. Some of her efforts had failed entirely; most succeeded at least in expanding the reach and the power of the Kraken Society. But as the illithid’s power grew, so also did her frustration and her obsessive desire to overcome anything that stood against her. One failure that weighed heavily upon Vestress was that which had been exiled to Ruathym.
Many years ago, Vestress had wrested the city of Ascarle from other hands. Fell creatures and evil spirits had haunted the near-ruins buried in the watery depths north of the Purple Rocks. Most fearsome was the banshee who watched over the sunken treasure. The creature had been a wizard, a member of a drow army that had marched against the elven city in centuries beyond memory, only to be destroyed in turn when the rush of melting glaciers swept Ascarle away. The drow wizard had remained beyond death, transformed into a banshee, protecting the lost magical treasures of the city from any who might try to claim them. Vestress had overcome the banshee in a titanic magical battle and banished the undead drow to some unknown place. Thus had things remained for many years.
Then came Iskor, the water wraith, and the influx of extraplanar creatures such as nereids to add to the strength of Ascarle. Vestress was pleased—more so when these creatures inadvertently discovered a watery portal between the subterranean city and the distant island of Ruathym.
Midpoint between the Purple Rocks and the Moonshaes, due west from Waterdeep and lying on the warm river of water that ran eastward through the sea from the elves’ island stronghold of Evermeet, Ruathym would be an important strategic addition to her empire. Vestress determined to add the island to the lands held in the grip of the Kraken Society. But when she tried to send her armies, she came up against an ancient and implacable enemy: the banshee, which had taken up residence in the watery portal.
Mindless in its purpose after the passage of centuries, the undead creature refused to let any living creature through the portal and spent its remaining power keeping the magic gateway closed. Not one to be outdone, Vestress quickly changed tactics, employing her powerful and ambitious Luskan agent to aid in the fall of Ruathym. Only recently had Vestress discovered that the elemental creatures, such as Iskor and the nereids, were beyond the banshee’s magic, and the illithid had added the efforts of these extraplanar allies to the coming conquest, sending them to the island to quietly decimate Ruathym’s fighting forces. But these intrusions had made the elven spirit restive. Vestress, too, was growing restless, and the illithid was eager to see the illusive banshee overcome once and for all. And when the banshee was gone from Ruathym and the portal open, all the armies of Ascarle would pour through. Ruathym would be hers to rule.
The Regent of Ascarle turned abruptly and glided from the scrying chamber that linked her to every corner of her hidden empire. At this moment, the frustrated illithid felt need of her loom. The intricate patterns of her tapestries, the interaction of warp and weft, was something she could control utterly.
But the weaving room was not unoccupied. Shakti stood in the chamber, studying the nearly finished tapestry stretched out on the loom. The priestess looked up as Vestress approached.
“An interesting scene,” the drow said, pointing to the picture of sea elves staked out on the dry ground, writhing in torment in the harsh light of the sun. “It seems to me, though, that the human over in this corner was not in the picture yesterday. He looks very like one of the slaves.”
From time to time, I must eat, the illithid said calmly.
A weird light fla
shed in the drow’s eyes. “Then it is as I thought! You have found a way to capture the spirits of these … creatures upon your tapestry!” The drow reached into the coils of her hair and took from it a stiletto, four inches long but slender as a needle. This she poised over one of the tormented sea elves. “May I?”
The illithid nodded permission, and Shakti plunged the weapon into the weave of the tapestry. The impaled sea elf writhed and twisted, his mouth open in a silent shriek.
“Fascinating,” murmured the drow as she took a few more experimental stabs. “Such a thing would command a fabulous price in Menzoberranzan!”
Once Ruathym is under the rule of Luskan and your wizard captured, perhaps I shall make you a present of it.
Shakti tucked away the stiletto with obvious regret and turned a measuring gaze upon the illithid. “As to that, I know your true intentions, even if that fool Rethnor does not,” the drow stated calmly. “You will allow Luskan to conquer Ruathym, but not rule it.”
We are pleased with your acumen, the illithid agreed, honestly enough. It is true that we are using Luskan. It would not do at all for news to get out that the island of Ruathym had been overrun by some mysterious force, and for enterprising adventurers to trace the invasion back to Ascarle. No, let the blame rest entirely upon the humans. We will not risk revealing the location of this city.
“What part in this have you assigned to me?” demanded the priestess. “Do not try to deny it—you would not keep me here, else.”
Vestress considered the drow for a long moment before responding. We wished to observe and measure your abilities. When the conquest of Ruathym is completed, we will bid Iskor to return you to Menzoberranzan so that the Kraken Society might have a competent pair of eyes in the Underdark. Your service will be rewarded through information. The vast network of spies, thieves, and assassins that make up the Kraken Society will be at your disposal.
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